For days now my heart has felt heavy and I have not known why. And certainly we need no reason to feel a sadness…as there is much in our world to be sad for…AND to Love. But a sadness and so many questions were hovering.
This morning as I walked in the freshly cut alfalfa field, feeling eruptions of grief for all the news of loss pouring in, I felt the weight and suddenly sensed that Grand Mother Earth was inviting me to lay my heavy body down on her and allow her to hold me. There in the deep fleshy grass near the place where the water collects, I found a deer bed and lay down on my back, took in the sky and was held. Immediately I sensed green hands reaching up to gather me in an embrace…it was as if these hands went right to my heart and the contracted muscles of stress let go a little.
I love this Earth.
Sixteen years ago, when death came to stand beside me, I entered into a kind of apprenticeship with Death. I believe it will go on for my entire life. It was not long after entering that apprenticeship that I noticed how Love was absolutely entwined in this event. Death met me again and again and I made a promise to look it straight in the eyes. I found, inevitably that Big Love was always there, standing behind Death.
I believe that one pours into the other.
When Death comes, Love pours in. When Love comes, Death is always sitting on its shoulder.
This does not necessarily make death any easier, but it did, for me bring rhyme and reason to it all…it invites me again and again to see a bigger picture that shows us that death is under our feet and is the earth for new life. It just is. They feed one another somehow.
In this time when I imagine all the frightened creatures and plants of the fire ravaged land…I remember and try to open to the Love that is there with the Loss.
If your heart is heavy, lay down in the grass and allow the green hands to carry your weight for a while….
and then hold Her with YOUR green hands.